Chapter 36

It was after eleven o'clock when Napoleon arrived on the battlefield, where several corps had already come to join Lannes and Mortier. The remainder, including the Guard, were arriving one by one. Napoleon readjusted the line: Ney was on the right, positioned in the wood at Sortlack; Lannes and Mortier formed the centre, between Posthenen and Heinrichsdorf; the left stretched out beyond this last village. The heat was overpowering. The Emperor gave the troops an hour's rest, after which, at the signal of a volley by twenty-five guns, a general attack would begin.

Marshal Ney's corps had the most difficult task, for they were to come out of their hiding place in the woods of Sortlack, fight their way into Friedland, which was filled with the main forces and reserves of the enemy, seize the bridges and thus cut off the Russian's way of retreat.

It is difficult to understand why Benningsen had placed his forces in front of the narrow exit from Friedland, and with their backs to the Alle with its steep banks, in the presence of the French who commanded the open country. The explanation given later by the Russian general was that having been a day ahead of Napoleon, he did not believe that the French troops could cover in twelve hours a distance which had taken his men twenty-four hours, and he had thought that Lannes' corps was an isolated advance-guard of the French army, which he could easily crush. When this illusion had been dissipated, it was too late to bring his army back to the other bank because the narrow defile at Friedland would have caused certain disaster, so he preferred to stand and fight.

At about one in the afternoon, the twenty-five guns at Posthenen, given the order by the Emperor, fired a volley, and battle was joined all along the line. At first our left and our centre moved very slowly to give the right, commanded by Ney, time to capture the town. The marshal, emerging from Sortlack wood, took the village of that name and advanced rapidly towards Friedland, sweeping aside everything in his path; but as they moved forward from the wood and the village of Sortlack to the first houses of Friedland, Ney's troops were exposed to the fire of the Russian batteries which, positioned behind the town on the heights of the opposite bank, caused them severe losses. This fire was made more dangerous by the fact that the gunners, separated from us by the river, could aim their guns in safety, knowing that our infantry could not attack them. This serious problem could have led to the failure of the attack on Friedland, but Napoleon overcame it by sending General Senarmont with fifty guns, which he placed on the left bank of the Alle, and subjected the Russian batteries to such heavy fire that they were soon silenced. As soon as the enemy fire had ceased, Marshal Ney resumed his advance, driving the Russians back into Friedland, and mingled in confusion with them, entered the streets of the unfortunate town, where the mortar bombs had started a huge fire.

A savage bayonet fight ensued in which the Russians, crammed together and scarcely able to move, suffered enormous losses! … At last, in spite of their courage, they were compelled to retreat in disorder and seek refuge by crossing the bridges to the other bank; but General Senarmont had moved his guns into a position from which he could fire on the bridges, which he soon broke, after killing many of the Russians who were attempting to escape across them. All those who remained in Friedland were either killed, captured or drowned while trying to cross the river.

Up until this point, Napoleon had, so to speak, made his left and his centre mark time; he now moved them rapidly forward. General Gortschakoff, who commanded the centre and right wing of the enemy, attempted, bravely, to recapture the town, (which would have been of no use, because the bridges were down, although he did not know that). He charged at the head of his men into the burning Friedland; but driven out by Ney, who was occupying the town, and forced back into the open, he found himself confronting our centre, who drove him back to the Alle at Kloschenen. The Russians defended themselves heroically and refused to surrender although completely surrounded. Many of them were killed by our bayonets, the remainder rolled down the steep banks into the river, where a large number were drowned.

The extreme right of the enemy was composed mostly of cavalry who tried during the battle to capture or outflank the village of Heinrichsdorf; but driven off by our troops, they went back to the banks of the Alle, under the command of General Lambert, who, seeing that Friedland was in the hands of the French and that the Russian left and centre were defeated, gathered all he could of the regiments of the right wing and made off from the battlefield down the side of the Alle. Nightfall prevented the French from following, so his was the only body of Russian troops to escape the disaster.

Our victory was one of the most complete; we captured all the Russian guns; we did not take a many prisoners during the action, but a great many of the enemy were killed or wounded, amounting to more than twenty-six thousand; our losses were no more than three thousand dead and four or five thousand wounded. Of all the battles fought by the Emperor, this was the only one in which the number of his troops exceeded that of the enemy. The French strength was eighty thousand and the Russian's only seventy-five thousand. The remnants of the Russian army marched in disorder all night, and retired behind the River Pregal, having destroyed the bridges.

Marshals Soult, Davout and Murat had not been involved in the battle of Friedland, but their presence induced the Russians to abandon Konigsberg, which town our troops entered. We found there an immense store of all kinds of material.

I did not suffer any injury during the battle, though I ran into a number of dangers. You saw how I left Posthenen in the morning, on Marshal Lannes' orders, to go as quickly as possible to warm the Emperor that the Russians were crossing the Alle, and that a battle appeared imminent. Napoleon was at Eylau; I had therefore to make a journy of about six leagues to reach him, which would have presented no difficulty to my excellent mare if the road had been clear, but as it was congested by the troops of various units hurrying to the aid of Marshal Lannes at Friedland, there was no way in which I could gallop along it. I therefore went across country, which meant that Lisette, having had to jump hedges, fences and ditches, was already very tired when I met the Emperor, who was just leaving Eylau. However, I had, without a moment of rest, to return with him to Friedland, and although this time the troops moved to one side to let us pass, my poor mare, having galloped over twelve leagues altogether, six of them being across country, and in very hot weather, was utterly exhausted by the time I had rejoined Marshal Lannes on the battlefield. I realised that Lisette could not continue to carry me during the action, so, taking advantage of the rest which Napoleon allowed the troops, I set out to look for my servant, in order to change horses; but in the middle of such a large collection of troops there was not much hope of finding him. It was, in fact, impossible, and I went back to the staff still mounted on the weary Lisette.

Marshal Lannes and my comrades, who saw my problem, had advised me to dismount and allow my mare a few hour's rest, when I caught sight of a Hussar leading a horse which he had captured from the enemy. I took it over, and gave Lisette to one of the troopers of the marshal's escort, so that he could take her back behind the lines, let her have some food and hand her over to my servant, when he could find him. I then got astride my new mount, took my place among the aides-de-camp, and when it came to my turn, I went off.

I was, at first, very pleased with my fresh horse, until the time came when, Marshal Ney having gone into Friedland, Marshal Lannes sent me to warn him of an enemy movement. I had barely entered the town when this devil of a horse, which had behaved so well in the open country, finding itself in a little square, where all the houses were on fire and the street covered with burning planks and furniture, in the midst of which a number of bodies were being roasted, was so frightened by the sight of the flames and the smell of burning flesh that it would go neither forward nor back, and, digging in its heels, it remained motionless, snorting loudly, and no amount of spurring would persuade it to move. Now the Russians, having gained a momentary advantage, pushed our men back to the point where I was, and from the height of a church and some neighbouring houses, they were raining down bullets, while two guns which they carried with them fired grape-shot at the soldiers among whom I was.

Many men were killed around me, which recalled to my mind the position in which I had found myself at Eylau in the middle of the 14th. As I was not anxious to be wounded again and in any case, in staying where I was I was not carrying out my mission, I simply dismounted, and abandoning my infernal mount, I slipped through the houses to contact Marshal Ney at another spot, which was pointed out by some officers.

I was with him for some fifteen minutes; there were some bullets flying around, but nothing like so many as there had been at the place where I had left my mount. The Russians were eventually driven back at bayonet point and forced to retreat toward the bridges, whereupon Marshal Ney sent me to take the good news to Marshal Lannes. To get out of the town, I took the same route as I had taken to get in, and went through the little square where I had left my horse. It had been the scene of a fierce encounter which had left many dead and dying, among whom I saw my stubborn horse, its back broken by a cannon-ball, and its body riddled by bullets!…. From there I made for the outskirts in something of a hurry because the burning houses were collapsing on all sides and I was afraid of being buried beneath the debris. At last I got out of the town and reached the edge of the lake.

The heat of the day, added to that of the fire which was raging in the streets through which I had passed, had bathed me in sweat, and I was dropping with fatigue and hunger, for I had spent a night on horseback to come from Eylau to Friedland, I had galloped back to Eylau and returned to Friedland once more, and had not eaten since the previous evening. I was not looking forward, therefore, to crossing, under a blazing sun, the large area covered with high standing corn which separated me from Marshal Lannes. But once again I had a stroke of luck. General Grouchy's division of dragoons had been engaged not far away in a sharp encounter in which, although victorious, they had lost a number of men, and the colonels had, as was usual, collected the horses of the men who had been killed and put them in the hands of a detachment which would lead them away. I saw this body of men, of which every trooper was leading four or five horses and was taking them to the lake to drink.

I spoke to the officer in charge who, encumbered by all these led horses, was only too glad to let me have one, which I promised to return to his regiment in the evening. He picked out for me an excellent beast, which had been the mount of a sous-officier killed during the charge; astride of this horse, I returned rapidly to Posthenen.

I had hardly left the edge of the lake when it became the theatre of the most savage encounter, which was due to the desperate attempt made by Gortschakoff to reopen a way of retreat by capturing the road to Friedland which was held by Marshal Ney. Caught between the marshal's troops and those of our centre, who were now advancing, Gortschakoff's Russians defended themselves bravely amongst the houses bordering the lake; so that if I had stayed there, where I had thought of resting for a while, I would have landed in the middle of this fierce outbreak of fighting. I rejoined Marshal Lannes at the moment when he was moving towards the lake to attack the rear of the Russian troops whom Ney was driving away from the front of the town, and I was able to give him some useful information about the terrain on which we were fighting.

If the French army did not take many prisoners during the battle of Friedland, it was a different matter the next day and the days following; for the Russians, pursued with a bayonet at their backs, thrown into complete disorder and utterly exhausted, were abandoning their ranks and lying down in the fields, where we captured a great number. We also collected a large quantity of artillery. All those members of Benningsen's army who escaped hurried back across the Nieman, behind which was the Russian emperor who, perhaps recalling the danger to which he had been exposed at Austerlitz, had judged it unwise to assist in person at the battle of Friedland; and two days after our victory he hastened to ask Napoleon for an armistice, to which Napoleon agreed.

Three days after the battle the French army reached the town of Tilsit and the river Nieman, which at this point is only a few leagues from the frontiers of the Russian empire.

The rear of a victorious army presents a most dismal spectacle. The path of their advance is strewn with the dead, dying, and wounded, while the survivors, soon forgetting those comrades who have fallen in the fighting, rejoice in their success and go forward cheerfully to new adventures. Our men were delighted to see the Nieman, whose opposite bank was occupied by the remains of that Russian army which they had defeated in so many engagements; and where, in contrast to their own lighthearted songs, there reigned a mournful silence. Napoleon established himself at Tilsit, and his troops encamped around the town. The Nieman separated the two armies; the French occupied the left bank and the Russians the right.

The Emperor Alexander having requested a meeting with Napoleon, this took place on the 25th of June, in a pavilion on a raft anchored in the middle of the river, in sight of the two armies which lined the banks. It was a most imposing spectacle. The two emperors arrived, each from his own side, accompanied by only five of the principal officers of their armies. Marshal Lannes, who flattered himself that he should accompany the Emperor, saw himself displaced by Marshal Bessieres, an intimate friend of Prince Murat; and he never forgave the marshals for depriving him of what he considered his right.

So Marshal Lannes stayed with us on the quay at Tilsit, from where we saw the two emperors embrace on meeting, which occasioned much cheering from both camps. The next day, the 26th, in the course of a second interview which took place once more in the pavilion on the Nieman, the Russian emperor presented to Napoleon his unfortunate friend, the King of Prussia. This prince whom the fortunes of war had stripped of a vast kingdom, leaving him only the small town of Memel and some miserable villages, maintained a bearing worthy of a descendant of Frederick the Great: Napoleon greeted him politely but coolly, for he considered that he had reason to complain of his conduct, and he planned to confiscate the greater part of his states.

To facilitate the meetings of the two Emperors, the town of Tilsit was declared neutral, and Napoleon handed over half of it to the Russian emperor, who set himself up there with his Guard. The two sovereigns spent some twenty days together, during which time they decided the fate of Europe. During these proceedings, the King of Prussia was relegated to the right bank, and had no quarters in Tilsit, which he visited but rarely. One day Napoleon went to call on the Queen of Prussia, who was said to be greatly distressed. He invited her to dine with him on the following day. She accepted the invitation, no doubt with little pleasure, but realising that at a time when peace was being sought it was necessary to take every measure to soften the heart of the victor.

Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia thoroughly detested one another: she had grossly insulted him in several proclamations, and he had returned the complement in his bulletins. Their meeting, however, did not display their mutual hatred; Napoleon was respectful and attentive, the queen gracious in her attempts to captivate her former enemy; attempts made all the more determinedly as she was not unaware that the peace treaty created—under the name of the kingdom of Westphalia—a new state, whose territory was to be provided by the electorate of Hesse, and by Prussia itself.

The Queen was resigned to the loss of several provinces, but she could not accept the loss of the fortified city of Magdeberg, possession of which was needed for the security of Prussia. For his part, Napoleon, who planned to nominate his brother Jerome as King of Westphalia, intended to add Magdeberg to this new state. It appears that, during the meal, the Queen deployed her not inconsiderable charms, and when Napoleon, to change the conversation, praised a superb rose which the Queen was wearing, she said to him, "Would your majesty not accept this rose in return for Magdeberg?" A more chivalrous person might have accepted, but Napoleon was too much of a realist to be won over by a pretty proposition. One may be sure that he restricted himself to admiring the beauty of the rose and also of the hand which proffered it, but he did not take the flower, which brought tears to the Queen's eyes. The conqueror, however, did not seem to notice. He kept Magdeberg and politely conducted the Queen to the boat which was to carry her to the opposite bank.

During our stay at Tilsit, Napoleon held a review of his Guard and the army in the presence of Alexander, who was impressed by the martial air and bearing of these troops. The Russian Emperor, in his turn, put on display some fine battalions of his Guard, but he did not dare to parade his line regiments, whose numbers had been so greatly reduced at Heilsberg and Friedland. As for the King of Prussia, of whose regiments there remained only the broken debris, he did not exhibit them at all.

Napoleon drew up, with Russia and Prussia, a peace treaty in which the principal articles related to the creation of the kingdom of Westphalia for the benefit of Jerome Bonaparte. The elector of Saxony, now an ally and friend of France, was elevated to the dignity of king, and was awarded, in addition, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, composed of a vast province of the former Poland, which was recovered from the Russians. I shall not go into the less important articles of the treaty, which resulted in the re-establishment of peace between the great powers of continental Europe.

In elevating his brother to the throne of Westphalia, Napoleon added to the mistakes he had already made in awarding the kingdom of Naples to Joseph and that of Holland, Louis. The people of these countries felt humiliated at being ruled by foreigners who had not themselves done anything of importance and who were, in fact, nonentities, who had no merit except that of being Napoleon's brothers. The dislike and distrust which these new kings attracted contributed largely to the Emperor's downfall. The conduct of the King of Westphalia in particular made very many enemies for Napoleon.

Having concluded the treaty, the two Emperors parted with mutual assurances of friendship, which at the time seemed sincere.