Battle of Preussisch Eylau

Battle of Eylau
Part of the War of the Fourth Coalition
Napoléon on the Battlefield of Eylau by Antoine-Jean Gros
Date 7–8 February 1807 Location Preußisch Eylau, East Prussia Result Tactical French victory; Strategically inconclusive
Belligerents
French Empire	Russian Empire Prussia
Commanders and leaders
Napoleon I	Levin August von Bennigsen
Strength
75,000: Napoleon: 45,000 Ney: 14,500 Davout: 15,000 300 cannons	76,000: Benningsen: 67,000 Russians L'Estocq: 9,000 Prussians 400 cannons
Casualties and losses
15,000–30,000	15,000–20,000

The Battle of Eylau or Battle of Preussisch-Eylau, 7 and 8 February 1807, was a bloody and inconclusive battle between Napoléon's Grande Armée and the Imperial Russian Army under the command of Levin August, Count von Bennigsen near the town of Preußisch Eylau in East Prussia. Late in the battle, the Russians received a timely reinforcement from a Prussian division of . The town is now called Bagrationovsk and is a part of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. The engagement was fought during the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars. Of all Napoleonic battles, this is considered to be the most uncertain and mysterious for several reasons — mainly the strength of Murat's reserve cavalry.

Napoleon's armies previously smashed the army of the Austrian Empire in the Ulm Campaign and the combined Austrian and Russian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. Austerlitz forced the Austrians to sue for peace and their Russian allies to withdraw from the conflict. On 14 October 1806, Napoleon crushed the armies of the Kingdom of Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. After a rapid pursuit, the broken pieces of the Prussian army were destroyed at the Battles of Prenzlau and Lübeck and in a series of capitulations at Erfurt, Pasewalk, Stettin, Magdeburg, and Hamelin. Eylau was the first serious check to the Grande Armée and the myth of Napoleon's invincibility was badly shaken. However, the French would end up defeating the Russians later in the year at the Battle of Friedland.

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