Preussisch Eylau was a small East Prussian town between frozen lakes and open plain. On 8 February 1807 a snowstorm blinded both armies: Augereau's corps, marching by compass, drifted off course and was destroyed at point-blank range by Russian artillery. Murat saved the day with eighty squadrons, the largest cavalry charge of the century.
The town is now called Bagrationovsk, after the Russian general Bagration; it has been Russian since 1945 and lies in Kaliningrad oblast, on the Polish border. The landscape — flat fields, copses, ponds — has changed little, but nothing guides the visitor. A few monuments and a commemorative plaque recall the battle; the building where Napoleon is said to have set up his command post is still pointed out.
The next day the Emperor rode over a field covered with snow and bodies. No bulletin could present this as a victory: the Russians had withdrawn in order, the French army was exhausted, losses were comparable on both sides. It was the Empire's first great carnage without result, and the army understood as much.
The answer came from painting. In 1807 the government held a competition to depict the day; Antoine-Jean Gros won with an immense canvas in which Napoleon, on horseback among the wounded, raises his hand in a gesture of compassion. A victory could not be painted, so an emperor who suffers was painted instead — the regime's first great visual lie, and one of its finest.
