The Battle of Friedland: Charge of the 12th Cuirassiers, 1807 (NAP0254)

Friedland, 1807: the 12th Cuirassiers, seen head-on

The regiment is coming straight at you: cuirasses, crested helmets, swords up, the eagle in the middle, the number 12 on the shabraques, the trumpeter in red on his white horse. And on the right, what charge paintings rarely show — a horse going down and its rider falling with it.

The horse is the fragile part

The man is armoured and the animal is not, for a simple reason: armour for the horse would cost exactly the weight the horse has to carry. So in a charge it is the horses that fail first — shot, wounded, or simply blown — and a dismounted cuirassier in the middle of a mêlée is a heavy man on foot with a weapon designed to be used from the saddle. The equipment that makes him formidable mounted condemns him the moment he is off.

Receiving a charge

Head-on, you understand what the infantry saw: a line that grows, the sound arriving before the picture, and the impossible calculation of whether the square will hold. It almost always does, provided nobody runs. That is why cavalry charges against formed infantry usually fail — and why, when they succeed, it is because somebody moved a second too early.

Friedland, or the day artillery takes over

On 14 June 1807 the Russian army fought with the river Alle behind it and the town and its bridges at its back. The decision came not from cavalry but from General Sénarmont, who ran his batteries forward to within a few dozen metres of the Russian columns and fired canister at point-blank range. In minutes the Russian centre ceased to exist. It is one of the first occasions on which field artillery was used not to prepare an assault but to replace it.

What the day produced

Friedland ended the war: a fortnight later Napoleon and Alexander met on a raft in the middle of the Niemen and signed Tilsit. It is the high point of the imperial system — and it is also the treaty that created the Duchy of Warsaw and forced the Continental System on Russia, which are the two threads that, five years later, brought this same army back into Russia.