Battle of Eylau

The battle of Eylau, fought on 7th-8th February 1807 in a snowstorm in East Prussia, was the first great check of Napoleon's land career. Bennigsen's Russian army of about sixty-seven thousand with four hundred guns faced fewer than fifty thousand French. A blind night fight for the village preceded the main struggle; on the second day Augereau's corps, launched into the blizzard, was nearly annihilated, and while the Russian centre stood, Murat's charge of some ten thousand horsemen punched through it without deciding anything. Both armies held their ground until nightfall, then the Russians withdrew. Casualties were frightful on both sides, with the French alone losing perhaps twenty-five thousand men. Napoleon kept the field but no victory; Eylau showed Europe that the Grande Armée could be bled to a standstill. It was said that the wounded lay frozen where they fell, and that veterans called Eylau the most terrible day they ever saw.