Crisis in the Snows: Russia Confronts Napoleon, The Eylau Campaign, 1806–1807 (review)

In their foreword, James R. Arnold and Ralph R. Reinertsen lay out their two-fold purpose for writing Crisis in the Snows: to make use of previously untapped archival sources and academic studies to give a more complete narrative of the 1807 Polish campaign which culminated with the Battle of Eylau and to use those sources to show shortcomings of the myth of invincibility of the emperor and his Grande Armée. The authors succeed in these goals while showing the importance of the maneuvers and preparatory engagements as well as the campaign’s implications for the future of the Napoleonic Empire.

The authors begin with a series of vignettes designed to show the evolution of the conflict between Russia and Napoleon and Czar Alexander’s developing relationship with the King of Prussia. This introduction is followed by a survey of the French and Russian armies, their strengths and weaknesses and their strategies for the approaching campaign. By late-Fall 1806, the czar had determined to confront Napoleon in Poland to save the Prussian throne and to halt French expansion by catching the Grande Armée unawares in a surprise winter campaign. In many ways this was to be a campaign of opposites: the Russian army, recently reformed along more modern lines, comprising serfs too often led by political (or “foreign”) generals; the French army, professional and well led at all levels. On the surface these qualities suggested an encore of the Austerlitz campaign. The reality was to be something different.

What quickly becomes apparent are the limits of the French military machine, or more specifically the limits of the Emperor’s abilities. According to Arnold and Reinertsen, within months following Napoleon’s destruction of the Prussian army, “came a seemingly implausible reversal of fortune when an inexperienced Russian army, riven by command dissension, inflicted a pair of severe checks against Napoleon’s legions at Pultusk and Golymin” (p. xiv). At Eylau on 8 February 1807, the check on Napoleon would be even more telling—the Russians under Bennigsen proved that the French emperor and his army could be defeated. It was in this campaign that glimpses of Napoleon’s shortcomings as a general first make themselves evident. Time and again he second-guessed (from the comfort of Warsaw) his field commanders and refused to recognize the realities of campaigning in the East. The army could not live off the land as it could in western and central Europe. The roads—where they existed—were horrid, turning to quagmire in the slightest rain. The authors repeatedly cite first-hand accounts of the difficulties these conditions raised. Wagons and artillery caissons sank to their axles; soldiers, thigh-deep in mud. “Never,” wrote General Senarmont, “has a campaign been more tough” (p. 179). Communication between far-flung corps d’armée proved slow, ineffective, and vulnerable to omnipresent Cossacks.

The authors’ uses of primary sources, many previously untapped by western historians, bring these difficulties to life with a sense of immediacy. Occasionally, however, the effort to display their use of first-hand accounts intrudes upon the narrative. For example in describing the magnificent cavalry charge that saved the day at Eylau, Arnold and Reinertsen write: “Stout Russian resistance repulsed Grouchy’s first brigade. His second brigade charged and managed to gain ground at a heavy cost. Colonel Jean Bourbier of the 11th Dragoons fell from his horse with a mortal wound while leading this charge” (pp. 298–99). The reader is left to wonder who Bourbier was and why was his death in particular was so costly. No explanation is given—this was the first and last time Bourbier’s name was mentioned in the book.

Despite the slight confusion created by the occasional use of names without context or introduction, Arnold and Reinertsen accomplish their expressed purpose for Crisis in the Snows...