d he is mostly
spoken of as a foolish braggart and boaster; but it is a fact that he
did some things at an important time which indicated his possession of
qualities that were highly desirable in a general who was bound to act
against Napoleon. Having, in 1807, obtained command of the Russian army
in Poland, he had what the French considered the consummate impudence to
take the offensive against the Emperor, and compelled him to mass his
forces, and to fight in the dead of winter, and a Polish winter to boot,
in which all that is not ice and snow is mud. True, Napoleon would have
made him pay dear for his boldness, had there not occurred one or two of
those accidents which often spoil the best-laid plans of war; but as it
was, the butcherly Battle of Eylau was fought, both parties, and each
with some show of reason, claiming the victory. Had the Russians acted
on the night after Eylau as the English acted on the night after
Flodden, and remained on the field, the world would have pronounced them
victorious, and the French Empire might have been shorn of its
proportions, and perhaps have fallen, seven years in advance of its
time; but they retreated, and thus the French made a fair claim to the
honors of the engagement, though virtually beaten in the fight.
Benningsen boasted tremendously, and as there were men enough to believe
what he said to be true, because they wished it to be true, and as he
had behaved well on some previous occasions, his reputation was vastly
raised, and his name was in all mouths and on all pens. If the reader
will take the trouble to look over a file of some Federal journal of
1807, he will find Benningsen as frequently and as warmly praised as Lee
or Stonewall Jackson is (or was) praised by English journals in
1863,--for the Federalists hated Napoleon as bitterly as the English
hate us, and read of Eylau with as much unction as the English of to-day
read of the American reverses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville,
while Austerlitz and Friedland pleased our Federalists about as well as
Donelson and Pulaski please the English of these times. A few months
after Eylau, Benningsen repulsed an attack which Napoleon imprudently
made on his intrenched camp at Heilsberg, which placed another feather
in his cap; nor did the smashing defeat he met with four days later, at
Friedland, lessen his reputation. The world is slow to think poorly of a
man who has done some clever things. We have seen how it wa