Napoléon, with the Prussian army routed at…
January 1807 CE
These were largely Russians under the command of the frail sixty-eight-year-old Field Marshal Count Mikhail Kamensky.
The old marshal had been unwilling to risk battle, and had continued to retreat, leaving the Grande Armée free to enter Poland almost unopposed.
Nevertheless, as the French pressed aggressively eastward across the Vistula, they had found the Russians defending the line of the Wkra River.
The French had seized a crossing over the Wkra on December 23 at the Battle of Czarnowo.
Russian resistance had soon stiffened and on December 26, the two armies clashed at the Battles of Pułtusk and Gołymin.
The result remained in doubt, but Levin August, Count von Bennigsen, had written to the Tsar that he had defeated sixty thousand French troops, and as a result had gained overall command of the Russian armies in Poland.
After these fierce engagements, Napoléon's troops had taken took up winter quarters in Poland to recuperate after a victorious but exhausting campaign.
In January 1807, Bennigsen attempts to surprise the French left wing by shifting the bulk of his army north from Nowogród to East Prussia.
Incorporating a Prussian corps on his right flank, he first bumps into elements of the VI Corps of Marshal Michel Ney, who had disobeyed his emperor's orders and advanced far north of his assigned winter cantonments.
Having cleared Ney's troops out of the way, the Russians roll down on the isolated French I Corps under Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.
Tough fighting at the Battle of Mohrungen allows Bernadotte's corps to escape serious damage and pull back to the southwest.
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