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him constituted little more than a division, but he soon found himself embroiled with the entire grande armée, and the battle that followed shattered the Fourth Coalition beyond repair. To attack the French, Bennigsen had had to move his entire army across the river Alle, of which the only crossings available were the single bridge at Friedland, three pontoon bridges and a minor ford. Still worse, his positions were overlooked by higher ground, and divided by a sizeable stream that ran down to the river just north of the town, while his army was badly outnumbered. No sooner had the French attacked, then, than the Russians were forced steadily back. As might have been expected after Eylau and Heilsberg, the action was no walkover. Lejeune paid tribute to the defenders’ ‘superhuman efforts’; Coignet wrote, ‘The Russians fought like lions: they preferred to be drowned rather than surrender’; while, for Sir Robert Wilson, ‘Never was resolution more heroic or patience more exemplary than that now displayed by the Russians.’54 But by nightfall it was all over: having suffered at least 20,000 casualties and been reduced to a state of the utmost confusion, Bennigsen’s army was in no fit state to fight on, while Alexander was driven to abandon Königsberg and forced to ask for an armistice. As for Napoleon, he was exultant. ‘Friedland,’ he proclaimed to an aide-de-camp, ‘is worth Austerlitz, Jena and Marengo, the anniversary of which I celebrate today!’55

If Friedland had been a shattering blow to Alexander, it was not the only reason why he decided to make peace. He suspected that the British had designs on Egypt, resented their failure to force the Dardanelles, and could not but feel that they had set far more store on Britain’s interests in the wider world than they had on the struggle in Europe. Such suspicions were not helped by the fact that in the spring of 1807 London was besieging Alexander with demands that Russia should renew an exceedingly favourable commercial agreement that had been negotiated between the two powers some years before and was now about to expire. On 26 March, true, the more vigorous Portland administration (headed, as its name suggests, by Lord Portland) had supplanted the Talents amidst much talk of both a substantial increase in subsidies and a British expeditionary force, but this was a question of too little, too late while there was in any case no way that troops could be got to the Baltic in the short term. Less important but just as irritating, meanwhile, were the actions of the Swedes, who, as well as seizing the £ 80,000 referred to above, had failed to provide Kolberg and Danzig with all the naval support that might have been expected. Sent to Alexander’s headquarters with assurances of aid, the British envoy, Leveson-Gower, was subjected to a veritable tirade:

I was interrupted by the emperor, who . . . said he was persuaded of the good intentions of the English government . . . but that he had to complain of the whole burden of the war having fallen upon his armies . . . that hopes had been held out that a British force would be sent to . . . Germany - month after month, however, had passed, and no troops were even embarked - that the Russian army had by its bravery hitherto maintained the contest and in every battle which had been fought had gained an advantage . . . but that it ought not to be forgotten that the chances of war were uncertain, and that this was the last act of the great drama which had occupied the attention of the world for the last fifteen years.56

If Alexander was thoroughly disillusioned by the summer of 1807, irritation was not the only motive for his conduct. Much of the Russian court and nobility were pressing for peace - an ominous development given the fate of Paul I. In addition, the mobilization of large numbers of men both for the regular army and for a new militia known as the opolcheniye had given rise to a shortage of manpower in the countryside. Tramping across Russia en route for a depot at Kaluga, one prisoner of war noted, ‘All the soldiers were