Napoleon’s Polish Lancers of the Imperial Guard

In the summer of 1806, after a brief pause in hostilities, it became clear that the fragile peace in continental Europe could not last for long. The previous year, in April 1805, the Third Coalition had been formed to fight Napoleon's expansionist French Empire; this alliance had comprised Britain, Austria, Russia, Sweden and some minor German states, but Prussia still stood aloof and neutral. However, on 3 November, as war already raged in Austria and in Italy, King Frederick William III of Prussia at last agreed to co–operate with the Allied powers. Under the terms of this secret Treaty of Potsdam with Tsar Alexander I of Russia, Prussia undertook to demand from France, as the price of continuing peace, terms based on the 1801 Treaty of Luneville between France and Austria; if these were refused (as they would be), Prussia would join the Third Coalition with an army of 180,000 men.

Just a month later, before Prussia could open negotiations with France, Napoleon's crushing victory over the combined Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz on 2 December 1805 destroyed the Third Coalition and rendered this agreement null. It was 14 December before Napoleon received the Prussian envoy, Count Haugwitz; the Emperor was well aware of the secret negotiations with Russia, and the embarrassed Haugwitz could do nothing but congratulate Napoleon on his victory. Napoleon presented Prussia with his own terms, which were impossibly harsh: to join France in alliance against Britain, and to hand over her territories in western and southern Germany to France and her ally Bavaria.

One of the results of Austerlitz was the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, of which the Austrian monarch was also the sovereign. In July 1806 the south German states, freed from Austrian political and military supremacy, united into the Confederation of the Rhine, passing into Napoleon's camp; some rulers bound themselves even more closely into this relationship by marrying into Bonaparte's dynasty. This shift in the balance of power, confronting Prussia with French;allied Bavaria and with this new Rheinbund, made King Frederick William's response inevitable, and in October 1806 Prussia mobilized against France as a member of the Fourth Coalition alongside Britain, Russia and Saxony.

By the end of summer 1806, Prussia had concentrated 200,000 troops ready to march towards the Rhine. The Prussian army had never yet faced Napoleon's Grande Armée in battle, and Frederick the Great's heirs still believed themselves invincible.

With Prussian mobilization, Napoleon's Eagles — now based in Bavaria to supervise the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine — had to march eastwards for the second time in a year. Their invasion of Prussia on 8 October was so rapid that the inflexible and slow–moving Prussian armies were taken by surprise; within four days Marshal Lannes had defeated and killed Prince Louis Ferdinand at Saalfeld and Napoleon was threatening Berlin. The twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt, both fought on 14 October, destroyed Prussia's field army and forced her onto the defensive. Berlin, Magdeburg and Stettin fell into French hands; cities capitulated in the face of handfuls of French hussars, and soon the surviving Prussian troops were driven back into East Prussia and the territories of former Poland, hoping for the protection of the advancing Russian army.

Marching into what had been Poland, the French entered Poznan on 4 November, and Warsaw on 27 November; there Marshal Murat, clad in a lavish Polish–style uniform, was welcomed at the head of his troops like a liberator. By now Napoleon considered the campaign against Prussia to be over, and the French retired into winter quarters. The only major force still opposing him were Gen Levin Bennigsen's Russians; and a rapid strike mounted by Bennigsen from the Baltic coast in January 1807 forced Napoleon to react in what would become known as the 'Polish campaign'.

In the late 14th century, Queen Jadwiga had married the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Wladyslaw Jagiello, and his dynasty would rule over Poland until 1572. The 16th century was Poland's 'golden age'; but with the end of the Jagiellonian dynasty an elective monarchy took over the throne, causing constant internal rivalries and a fatal weakening. Soon Poland fell prey to its powerful neighbours Russia, Prussia and Austria, and in 1772 it had to hand over nearly a quarter of its territory to these powers in the so–called First Partition.

In May 1791 the Polish king, Stanislas II Poniatowski, agreed to reign as a hereditary constitutional monarch, introducing a more modern form of government. Conservative Polish dissenters appealed to Russia. The autocratic Catherine the Great saw this liberalizing progress as an infectious threat; Poland's small army of 46,000 men, led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Prince Jozef Poniatowski (the king's nephew), held off an invading Russian army for three months, but then the king and some politicians capitulated. Russia restored the old system, and divided large areas of Polish territory between themselves and Poland's faithless former ally Prussia, reducing the country to about one–third its former size in the Second Partition. This dismemberment provoked the popular revolt led by Kosciuszko in spring 1794. Against great odds the patriots achieved some victories, liberating Warsaw and Vilna, but by November large Russian and Prussian armies had crushed the rebellion. In 1796 the Third Partition saw the final destruction of the Polish state, which was wiped from the maps of Europe. Amid mass emigration many of Kosciuszko's supporters fled to Revolutionary France, hoping to find asylum and even to fight in the French army against the European monarchies ranged against the Revolution.

Meanwhile, the divided remnants of the Polish army had been forced to serve in the armies of Austria, Prussia and Russia. In November 1792 a French army defeated an Austrian–Piedmontese army at Sospello; they captured not only Austrians, but also hundreds of former Polish soldiers, and each victory over the Austrians would bring more Polish prisoners of war or deserters to serve the Republic.

One of the Polish officers who had followed Kosciuszko into exile in France was Gen J.H.Dombrowski (1755-1818), who organized a brigade–size Polish Legion from exiles, volunteers, prisoners of war and deserters; the organization and titles of this ever–growing Polish force would evolve over time. The major problem was that the French Republic did not allow foreign troops within their ranks; so the Polish Legion approached Gen Bonaparte, the conqueror of Italy, for help. He placed them on the pay list of Lombardy (the Cisalpine Republic), now under French control; and he even took a Polish officer, Josef Sulkowski, as an ADC. Gradually the Polish troops would become a major force within the French army, eventually rising to a corps with some 13,000 soldiers.