Furious at this mischance, Napoleon sent a mounted messenger to Paris ordering M. Denniée to entrust the portfolios in future only to officers who knew German, and who were enough accustomed to roughing it to be able to fulfil the mission more efficiently. M. Denniée was at a loss to find one when I presented myself with Marshal Lannes' letter summoning me to join him. Delighted at seeing a way of quickly getting off his portfolios with safety, he bade me get ready by the following Thursday, and gave me 5,000 francs for posting expenses and the purchase of a carriage. This suited me very well, as I had very little money with which to rejoin the army at the other end of Poland.
We left Paris about May 10; my servant and I were well armed, and whenever one of us was compelled to leave the carriage for a moment the other kept guard. We knew enough German to hurry along the postilions, who were far more amenable to an officer in uniform than to the clerks. Thus, instead of requiring, like those gentlemen, nine days and a half, or, perhaps, ten days to get from Paris to Finkenstein, I did the journey in eight days and a half.
The Emperor, delighted at getting his despatches twenty-four hours quicker, began by praising my zeal which had induced me to return to the army in spite of my recent wounds, and added that, as I was such a good postman, I was to start back that same night for Paris and bring back some more portfolios. This would not hinder me from being present when hostilities recommenced, which could not be until the beginning of June.
Although I had not by a long way spent the 5,000 francs which M. Denniée had handed me, the marshal of the Palace gave me the same amount for my return journey. I went back to Paris at full speed, remained twenty-four hours there, and started back for Poland. The minister of war handed me another 5,000 francs for the third journey; it was a good deal more than was necessary, but such were the Emperor's orders. It is true that the journeys were very tiring, and still more tedious, although the weather was very fine. I was on wheels day and night for nearly a month, with my servant as my sole companion. I found the Emperor again a the château of Finkenstein. I was afraid that just when fighting was going to begin I should have to go on acting postman; but luckily officers had been found to carry the despatches, and the service was already organised. The Emperor gave me leave to rejoin Marshal Lannes, which I did at Marienburg on May 25. Colonel Sicard, Augereau's aide-de-camp, was with him, and had been kind enough to bring my horses. It was a great pleasure to see again my dear mare Lisette, who was still capable of doing good service.
The fortress of Dantzig, which the French had besieged during the winter, had fallen into their hands. The return of the summer soon caused the campaign to be re-opened. The Russians beat up our cantonments on June 5, and were smartly repulsed at all points. At Heilsberg on the 10th there was an engagement sanguinary enough to have been dignified by some historians into a battle, the enemy being again beaten. I shall not give any details of this affair because Marshal Lannes' corps only came up at nightfall and took very little part in it. We received, however, a pretty good number of shot, one of which inflicted a mortal wound on Colonel Sicard, who had been struck by a bullet at Eylau and was hardly cured when he came back to fight afresh. Before dying he bade me take farewell of Augereau for him, and gave me a letter for his wife. It was a sad scene and distressed me much.
In our pursuit of the Russians we passed by Eylau. Three months before we had left the fields covered with snow and corpses, now they presented a lovely carpet of green studded with flowers. What a contrast! How many brave fighting men were resting under those green meadows! I went and sat down at the very place where I had fallen, where I had been stripped, where I must have died if a combination of really providential events had not saved me. Marshal Lannes wanted to see the hillock where the 14th had made such a gallant defence, and I took him there. The enemy had occupied this ground since the battle, but in spite of this we found no damage done to the monument which all the regiments of the French army had put up to their ill-fated comrades of the 14th, thirty-six of whose officers had been buried in the same trench. This respect for the fame of the dead does honour to the Russians. I halted for a few moments on the place where I had received the cannon-ball in my hat and the bayonet-wound, and thought of the brave men who lay beneath in the dust and whose fate I had gone so near to sharing.
After their defeat at Heilsberg on the 10th of June, the Russians made a headlong retreat and gained a day's march and the French, who, on the evening of the 13th, were assembled in advance of Eylau on the left bank of the Alle. The enemy occupied Bartenstein on the right bank, and the two forces descended the river, marching parallel with each other. Bennigsen, having his base of supplies at Königsberg, where the Prussian army was, planned to reach that town before the French army could come up; but to do this, he had to cross to the left bank of the Alle, along which Napoleon was marching from Eylau. The Russian general hoped to reach Friedland sufficiently in advance to be able to cross the river unopposed. But the same motives which made Bennigsen wish to keep Königsberg made it to the Emperor's interest to capture it, and for some days he had been manœuvring to outflank the enemy's left, in order to draw them away from the place; while he had detached Soult, Murat, and Davout towards it, in order to meet the Russians if they got there first. But he was not satisfied with this precaution. Foreseeing that in order to reach Königsberg the Russians would seek to cross the Alle at Friedland, he determined to occupy that town before them. In the night between June 13 and 14 he sent forward the corps of Marshals Lannes and Mortier, with three divisions of cavalry. The rest of the army was to follow. Lannes, who, with Oudinot's grenadiers and a brigade of cavalry, formed the advance, reached Posthenen, one league short of Friedland, at 2 A.M., and sent the 9th hussars to reconnoitre the latter town. They were driven back with loss, and the rising sun enabled us to see a large part of the Russian army massed on the other side of the river, on the high table-land between Allenau and Friedland. The enemy was beginning to cross the old bridge of the town, close to which he had constructed two new ones.
The aim which each side had in view was easy to understand. The Russians wished to cross the Alle and reach Königsberg; the French wished to hinder them, and roll them back from the other side of the river, the banks of which are very steep. There is no bridge save that at Friedland. The difficulty which the Russians had in debouching from the town into the plain on the left bank was increased by the fact that the issue from Friedland is narrowed at that spot by a largish lake, as well as by a stream called the Millstream, which runs in a deep and narrow ravine. To cover his passage, the enemy had thrown up two powerful batteries on the right bank, commanding the town, and part of the plain between Posthenen and Heinrichsdorf. The objects and respective positions of the two armies being thus made clear, I will briefly set out the chief incidents of this decisive battle, which led to a peace.
The Emperor was still at Eylau. The various army corps were marching on Friedland, from which they were several leagues distant, when Lannes, who had marched all night, arrived before the town. If the marshal had only listened to his own eagerness he would have attacked the enemy on the spot, but they had already 30,000 men in position on the plain in front of Friedland, and their lines, the right of which was in front of Heinrichsdorf, the centre on the Millstream, and the left on the village of Sortlack, were being continually strengthened, while Lannes had only 10,000 men. These, however, he placed very skilfully in the village of Posthenen, and in the wood of Sortlack, whence he threatened the Russian left, while, with two divisions of cavalry, he tried to stop their march on Heinrichsdorf, a village on the road from Friedland to Königsberg. A brisk fire was opened, but Marshal Mortier's corps appeared without delay, and in order to dispute the way to Königsberg with the Russians, while he waited for reinforcements, he occupied Heinrichsdorf and the space between that village and Posthenen. Still, it was not possible that Mortier and Lannes could, with 25,000 men, make head against the 70,000 Russians who would shortly face them. The moment was becoming very critical. Marshal Lannes was sending officers every instant to warn the Emperor to hurry up the army corps which he knew were on the march behind him. I was the first sent, and, mounted on my swift Lisette, I met the Emperor leaving Eylau and found him beaming. He made me come to his side, and as we galloped I had to give him an account of all that had taken place before I had left the field of battle. When I had ended my report the Emperor said smiling, 'Have you a good memory?' 'Pretty fair, sir.' 'Well, what anniversary is it to-day, 14th June?' 'Marengo.' 'Yes,' replied the Emperor, 'that of Marengo; and I am going to beat the Russians as I beat the Austrians.' So convinced was Napoleon on this point that as he rode along the columns, and while the soldiers saluted him with frequent cheers, he repeatedly said to them, 'To-day is a lucky day, the anniversary of Marengo.'
