On the morrow Bennigsen’s army was a mass of fugitives straggling towards the Pregel and fighting with one another for a chance to cross its long narrow bridge.  Even on the other side they halted not, but wandered on towards the Niemen, no longer an army but an armed mob.  On its banks they were joined by the defenders of Koenigsberg, who after a stout stand cut their way through Soult’s lines and made for Tilsit.  There, behind the broad stream of the Niemen, the fugitives found rest.

It will always be a mystery why Bennigsen held on to Friedland after French reinforcements arrived; and the feeling of wonder and exasperation finds expression in the report of our envoy, Lord Hutchinson, founded on the information of two British officers who were at the Russian headquarters: 

“Many of the circumstances attending the Battle of Friedland are unexampled in the annals of war.  We crossed the River Alle, not knowing whether we had to contend with a corps or the whole French army.  From the commencement of the battle it was manifest that we had a great deal to lose and probably little to gain:  ...  General Bennigsen would, I believe, have retired early in the day from ground which he ought never to have occupied; but the corps in our front made so vigorous a resistance that, though occasionally we gained a little ground, yet we were never able to drive them from the woods or the village of Heinrichsdorf."[133]

This evidence shows the transcendent services of Lannes, Oudinot, and Grouchy in the early part of the day; and it is clear that, as at Jena, no great battle would have been fought at all but for the valour and tenacity with which Lannes clung to the foe until Napoleon came up.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXVII

TILSIT

Even now matters were not hopeless for the allies.  Crowds of stragglers rejoined the colours at Tilsit, and Tartar reinforcements were near at hand.  The gallant Gneisenau was still holding out bravely at Kolberg against Brune’s divisions; and two of the Silesian fortresses had not yet surrendered.  Moreover, Austria seemed about to declare against Napoleon, and there were hopes that before long England would do something.  But, above all, since the war was for Prussia solely an affair of honour,[134] it deeply concerned Alexander’s good name not to desert an ally to whom he was now pledged by all the claims of chivalry until satisfactory terms could be gained.

But Alexander’s nature had not as yet been strengthened by misfortune and religious convictions:  it was a sunny background of flickering enthusiasms, flecked now and again by shadows of eastern cunning or darkened by warlike ambitions—­a nature in which the sentimentalism of Rousseau and the passions of a Boyar alternately gained the mastery.  No realism is more crude than that of the disillusionized idealist;